Life happens: A mile away from tragedy

By Aprill Brandon
April 16, 2013 at 3:02 p.m.Updated April 15, 2013 at 11:16 p.m.

A mourner places a note with flowers at a police barricade near the finish line of the Boston Marathon in Boston Tuesday, April 16, 2013. The bombs that ripped through the crowd at the Boston Marathon, killing three people and wounding more than 170, were fashioned out of pressure cookers and packed with metal shards, nails and ball bearings to inflict maximum carnage, a person briefed on the investigation said Tuesday. (AP Photo/Winslow Townson)

When tragedy strikes, heroes emerge.

By now, most people have heard of the heroism that came in the immediate aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings.

The journalist who put down his camera to help an injured woman.

Spectators who ran toward the explosions to help, instead of running away from them.

The runners who after making it through a grueling 26 miles continued to run all the way to the hospital to donate blood.

The police and emergency responders.

The volunteers.

All of them doing whatever they could in the chaos to help save lives.

Heroes. True heroes.

All of them.

But it's a different story a mile away.

I watched the horror unfold probably just as you did.

I was gathered around a TV with a group of people surrounding me, all of us trying to make sense of a world that no longer made sense.

The only difference is I was in a bar along the marathon route, a place where the bartender refused to turn up the volume or turn on the closed captioning for fear of inciting panic.

So instead of hearing an anchor give details, all we heard was speculation coming from a dozen different directions at once from confused patrons.

"Oh my God, is that purple stuff blood? Oh God, it's blood."

"I heard there are still bombs along the route. We should all leave."

"No, the police are telling everyone to stay where they are."

"They're shutting down public transportation."

"Don't use your cellphone. That's how they're detonating the bombs."

"My cousin said 100 people are dead."

"No, it's a only about a dozen."

"I heard only two, but one is a kid."

A mile away, there is no smoke, no blood, no severed limbs, no screams. There is only large groups of scared people trying to sort out the information from the misinformation.

We were far enough away to probably not be in any danger, but it still felt like we were in danger.

We were all desperately trying to get ahold of our families to let them know we were OK, only to realize with growing panic that our phones weren't working.

As agonizing minutes ticked by, we watched our phones blow up with calls and texts we were unable to answer.

A mile away, there wasn't much you can do to help. All I could do was hand out cigarettes to people because if there was ever a time to smoke, now would be it. I handed them out to the two guys who can't stop talking about how two people died and how they happen to be two people and how by that logic it could have been them.

I handed them out to the guy walking down the street who was looking for his friend whom he lost a few hours ago and was worried he left to be closer to the finish line.

I even handed one out to the young, drunk, scared girl who won't stop talking about how if a bomb was going to go off, they should have done it at Fenway where there was a game because somehow in her young, drunk, scared mind, blowing up baseball fans is better than blowing up marathon fans. And I just shook my head and forgave her because she's young, drunk, scared and alone.

A mile away, there was a frat house that turned their lawn party into a way station, offering passersby water or food or cellphones or cellphone chargers. Or probably, if I asked them, they'd even offer me a much needed hug.

A mile away, there was a former EMT who kept reassuring me that everything will be all right, she promised, when I heard that another possible bomb went off in a building close to my husband's work and I started to freak out that he's now in danger and as an afterthought that we're all still possibly in danger and the terror isn't over.

A mile away, there was a someone who let me get snot and eyeliner all over his shirt as I cried on his shoulder in front of another TV in another bar farther away from the finish line because I didn't know where else to go when the president made his address about the tragedy.

A mile away, there was a friend who pressed a crumbled $50 into my hands and insisted I take it so I could hail a cab home instead of taking the subway since the police were advising everyone to avoid crowds.

A mile away, there was a cabbie who let me tell the story of the first time I ever went to the Boston Marathon two years ago when I first came to Boston and how moved I was that so many people would stand for so many hours cheering on runners they didn't know and cheering just as loudly for the last runners as they did for the first.

And five miles away, when I finally got home, there was a husband who let me collapse into his arms sobbing because we both made it through this horrific day alive.

Yes, heroes emerge in a time of tragedy.

But a mile away from tragedy, there are only people doing whatever they can, whatever gesture, big or small, to help each other get through one of the worst days in American history.

Aprill Brandon is a columnist for the Advocate. Her column runs every two weeks in the Your Life section. Comment on this column at VictoriaAdvocate.com.